Category Archives: What if

First up apologies for leaving it so long before bringing you this month’s ‘what if’ game. Due to a mega-busy blogging schedule I didn’t think I’d have time, and I (if I’m honest) even considered axing them due to time constraints. But then I received a comment a week or so ago on an earlier what-if game post that moved me, and then I received a blog award and my what-if game posts seemed to be what earned me the award … and so I’m now eating humble pie and delivering what I hould have already delivered.

So, that said, here we go …

Rules are simple: All you have to do is read the below scenario, then imagine it is YOURSELF in there and leave a comment detailing what YOU would do. Not written as a character. But written as yourself.

Okay? Ready?

Here’s your scenario:

Mother said I should never open the box.

Okay, not strictly true.

Mother said I should never open the box … except in extreme circumstances.

I haven’t seen Mother for 15 days.

Not since those … creatures attacked the house. Not since she made me lock myself in the cellar … with the box … and told me not to come out.

Does this count as an extreme circumstance?

The growl of my stomach, the soreness of my lips, the dry desert, which used be my throat, refusing to allow more than one-syllable-sounds to escape … they all argue that if it isn’t an extreme circumstance already then it soon will be.

The surface of the box glides beneath my fingertips that have already gone numb. It doesn’t matter. I don’t need touch to know of the walnut veneer, the gold clasp shaped like a fist that’s afraid to lose hold, the amethyst-looking gemstones embedded into the outside edge of the lid—even in the pitch black, with only the luminous display of my watch as company, my memory won’t allow me to forget what it looks like.

I listen one more time. Just in case. But no noise greets me. Not even from beyond the house.

‘I’m sorry, Mother,’ I whisper inside my mind. ‘I have no choice.’

With fingers too shaky from lack of fuel to fully function, I locate the tiny metallic hand … and with one twist, the lid is released …

Annnnd, the floor is yours. What’s in the box? What happens next?

Feel free to join in and create your own ‘what-if’s. Simply use the hashtag for posting to Twitter.

Come one, come all, and join in the December issue of the monthly ‘what if’ game.

Rules are simple: All you have to do is read the below scenario, then imagine it is YOURSELF in there and leave a comment detailing what YOU would do.

You do NOT have to be a writer to participate. This is NOT a contest. This is purely for FUN and ALL are invited to play.

Okay? Ready?

Here’s your scenario:

You always knew there was something not quite right about the cat your aunt bought you as a house-warming gift. She’d said it was a regular ginger tabby. Never mind that it was HUGE and its hind legs held muscle mass Arnie would’ve been proud of, or the fact that its tail seemed to be running a one-man show with its constant contortionist acts. Or that its eyes were the blue of WKD. Aunt Pearl insisted it was normal. Just as she’d argued that the blasted creature was a she—despite the furry swellings that no female should have to live with.

For a while, you decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Until you swore the freaky animal smiled at you last week when you were peeling off your undies as it watched from dresser.

You’d swatted your bra in its direction, with a hissed, ‘Shoo, Blue.’

All that had earned you was a crazy-assed wink that your aunt had explained away as dust in its eye when you’d confronted her about it.

The next episode occurred in the kitchen—when you went downstairs one morning to discover the fridge open, half the contents missing, and Blue slumped on his butt looking like he’d swallowed a basketball.

‘What the hell, Blue!’ you’d yelled.

Blue had just purred.

Those were just the beginning of a whole series of events, each one of them as irritating and unnerving as the last.

Thanks to him, you’re as nervous as heck.

The call from Aunt Pearl announcing she’d set you up on a blind date left you screaming expletives at walls that couldn’t give a damn. You left the house purely to humour a woman who wouldn’t know how to give up even if she dropped dead. You even left the house wearing the little black number that usually bore results after—crazily—asking Blue’s opinion and receiving his purred response. When you walked into the restaurant and the waitress had shown you to your table, it had taken every ounce of will power not to goggle at the dude sitting at your table—a russet headed, blue eyed, hunky-as-hell dude whose gaze landed on you the instant you rounded the corner.

The evening only went uphill from there.

And after hours spent mesmerised by his extremely strong-looking hands, and his capable arms, and wondering about the strength of his thighs beneath the table, your offer of coffee has been accepted with a wink and a smile that sent your heart all aflutter.

But the closer you get to home, the tighter your body coils.

Because Blue has been less than receptive to all other ‘guests’ you’ve invited there.

The last guy left with a chewed shoe and claw marks in his shirt only to find his Audi hadn’t fared much better in the twenty minutes he managed to stick it out before Blue drove him away.

“Please let Blue behave,” you mumble under your breath as you turn the key in the door and enter your home.

“Mind if I use your bathroom?” asks your date.

You nod. “Sure. It’s at the end—”

“I know where it is,” he mutters, already climbing the stairs.

Whilst he’s gone, you do a quick scout for Blue. “Blue,” you whisper, “here, kitty, kitty.”

But he’s not in the kitchen. Not in the lounge. Even after a little ‘pss pss pss’ing’ he doesn’t race down the stairs as he usually does when you return home.

Almost catching you in the act, your hot dude reappears at the top of the stairs and you straighten from your undignified squat of checking under the sideboard. “Coffee?” you ask, and vanish in the direction of the kitchen.

By the time his feet hit the floor tiles behind you, you’ve already switched on the kettle and started spooning the granules into a couple of mugs.

You jerk when something brushes across your back, dropping the spoon with a clatter, and spin to the hunk to give him a piece of your mind for his forwardness—but as you do, he brushes over you again … with his cheek across your shoulder blade.

“Aren’t you going to stroke me?” he murmurs—and as he emits a deep rumbling purr, your entire body freezes.

Come one, come all, and join in the November issue of the monthly ‘what if’ game.

Rules are simple: All you have to do is read the below scenario, then imagine it is YOURSELF in there and leave a comment detailing what YOU would do.

You do NOT have to be a writer to participate. This is NOT a contest. This is purely for FUN and ALL are invited to play.

Okay? Ready?

Here’s your scenario:

You’re fifteen (again). You’re in senior (high) school. And Angela Blacksmith is annoying the crap out of you. It’s not enough that she spent the entire Math lesson drawing pictures of you with rats on your head and their tails hanging down as your hair. It’s not enough that she stood side by side with Bethany (Beefcake) Morris and Mel Cambry outside the toilet cubicle you used and created a human barricade that made you late for Biology. It’s not enough that she stole a cod fillet from the school kitchen and planted it in your locker, which she expertly broke into using her sharp-as-all-get-out nail file.

No … she had to go and trip you over, too—just as Carlton (Sweetcheeks) Monroe happened to be walking along the same corridor and smiling at you for the first time since second year when he let you share his cookie at the lunch table.

So now you’re mad. Real mad. You lift your face, from where it’s squidged against the tile, to a hoard of laughter and mocking expressions.

Right there, at the forefront, pointing her polished nail at you is the little [insert choice word] responsible.

Your teeth are grit. Your mind is blazing. You know you shouldn’t let yourself get mad. You know you should rein it in. Especially after what happened to your little brother last week when you caught him showing your underwear to his friends. But you just can’t help yourself.

Before you know it, your hands are free, you’re pointing your fingers right at Angela and, with a mumbled curse beneath your breath, you let fly a stream of ….

What? What exactly have you recently discovered you’re capable of?

Feel free to create your own ‘what-if’ scenarios for people to participate in. Simply tag them as #whatifgame on Twitter and ensure they’re posted the first Monday of every month.

Rules are simple: All you have to do is read the below scenario, then imagine it is YOURSELF in there and leave a comment detailing what YOU would do. Not written as a character. But written as yourself.

Okay? Ready?

Here’s your scenario:

Seven pm has arrived. Time for your jog. Seven pm jogging is a ritual of yours (if you’re like me and only jog when desperate for the loo, then just pretend you like to jog). You have your MP3 in your sweatpants pocket, your earbuds tucked into your lugholes, and your hair swept back into a tight ponytail (unless you’re bald). Door’s locked on your way out the house, a couple stretches on the front path that you know the old dude living across the way gets a kick out of spying on, and you’re off.

Less than 100 yards brings you to the park perimeter and you duck through a break in the hedgerow. The burn has already laid claim to your thighs. Your breaths have surpassed the pants of initial exertion and moved into the realm of shallow and regulated. And ACDC is blasting a tune into your ears.

After the soft padding of grass, the path sends jolts through your calves as you pummel the asphalt. One step … breathe … two step … breathe … three step … breathe … four—those tiny hairs smothering the nape of your neck snap upright like an army of downy soldiers.

Your pace falters. You spin around, jog backward, scanning the shadows of the trees to the left of the walkway. Though your vision conjures no images, you just know someone is there.

You whirl back onto your path—but not before knocking the volume right down on Fall Out Boy, now playing—and the rest of the straight stretch is covered with a tilt of your head.

The moment the footsteps fall into pattern to your rear, you capture them. Without intention, your speed picks up.

Boom-boom, boom-boom, the beat of your feet rapidly chased by the pursuing ones gives the impression of a heartbeat not quite sure of its rhythm, the duet growing closer together, the merging leaving you questioning if you’d even heard a second set at all … until the line of lamplight casts the shadow alongside your own.

Without a doubt: you are not alone.

Moronically, you weave a left through the bushes—despite knowing only a far stretch of trees lie that way (because the heroine NEVER acts rationally or responsibly in the movies, right?), and before you know it, twigs are scratching your cheeks as well as threatening to twist your damn ankles as they hang low from above and create a knobbly route beneath your soles.

Your breaths pant from you, their passage burning your chest. Sweat provides a chill across your brow as it connects with the night air to contrast against the heat of panic soaring through your body.

You erupt into a clearing.

Ahead is a man.

You skid to a halt, your squeaked cry penetrating the whump of your coursing blood. As you pivot to kick dust, the the first guy who shepherded you to the clearing stomps to a standstill on your other side.

His face twists in what appears to be temper … but not at you—his blackening eyes are directed only at the new arrival as fangs as long and sharp as leather-work needles shoot down from his gums.

At a deep rumbling to your rear, you whip round again—only to discover the thunderous racket is rolling from the throat of the other dude as he leans forward and bares his shiny straight gnashers.

This is the first in a series of posts I hope to bring to you once a month—on the 1st Monday of the month, schedule permitting.

The title of the post should pretty much cover it, but I’ll explain anyway.

Once a month, I shall post a scenario. A ‘what if’ scenario.

Some may be sensible (yes, I can be sensible), some may be middle of the road, and some may be so far off the wall you’ll wonder if I’ve lost my mind.

Then all you have to do is imagine it is YOURSELF in the scenario and leave a comment detailing what YOU would do. Not written as a character. But written as yourself.

It’s not hard. We all read crazy novels. We all get lost in the scenes. We all have the ability to picture ourselves there besides the characters we love, yes? This is no different.

Okay? Ready?

Here’s your first scenario:

You’ve been to the market to purchase the ingredients for Coq au Vin (people who are crap at cooking, feel free to use artistic license and pretend that you aren’t). Everyone (who can cook) knows that the dish tastes best if you go fresh, but the geezer you usually buy your herbs off is wrapped up in bed with a cold (according to the wart-nosed banana seller on the stall next door), so you strolled around until you stumbled across a new vendor—with rock bottom prices, which meant you went home a happy bunny.

You’ve browned your chicken. Your shallots and mushrooms are in. The wine is stinking the house out like a vinegar factory. And the time has arrived to add those flavoursome plants that you’ve chopped to within an inch of their greenness and bundled into a muslin sack that puss-in-boots would approve of …

But the second they hit the pot, merge with the liquid, steam spirals up like a rouged transparent corkscrew, mushrooming as it hits the ceiling. Before you can say now-there’s-something-you-don’t-see-every-day-crikey-what-the-hell-was-in-those-herbs, the entire kitchen is consumed by billowy plumes, leaving you blind to all but the pot into which you are staring as though you’ve never seen the darn thing before in your life.

I’d imagine a little “What the heck?” might ensue right before the stir of your wooden spoon has the opposite effect and every ounce of fog is sucked right back into the herbed pouch like you’ve hit the button on rewind.

As you lift your head in a ‘Huh?!?!?!’ kinda moment, a huge shadow eclipses with enough bulk to land in your right periphery … and you just know that someone (or something) is standing behind you …

Writing for the love of it

Howdy!

Best known for her Holloway Pack Stories, J. A. Belfield lives in Solihull, England, with her husband, two children, a dog she treats like a baby and a cat that drives her nuts. She writes paranormal romance, with a second love for urban fantasy. Look out for CORNERED: Holloway Pack 5, coming soon.